FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT ELENA BEREZNAIA - PAGE 2

The International Olympic Committee always has been good for a few laughs, but now it's just a joke. Yes, there was justice in the IOC's awarding of a second gold medal Friday in the pairs figure skating competition. Yes, the allegations of chicanery by some judges warranted action. But the organization set a land-speed record in caving in to public sentiment. Four days after the competition and four days after NBC's excitable boy, Scott Hamilton, burst a water pipe over the judging, the IOC upgraded Jamie Sale and David Pelletier from silver to gold.

The temperature outside Eccles Rink was minus-8 Tuesday morning. Inside the month-old building, where the Russian figure skating team is doing its final Olympic preparations, Elena Bereznaia was burning mad at herself. She had become too hot to handle for her pairs skating partner, Anton Sikharulidze, which made him angry with her. On her day off from training Monday, Bereznaia spent an hour on a snowmobile, which left her face wind-burned. Then she went to a tanning salon, where she managed to burn her arms and torso.

John Zimmerman's trip to Utah can be best described in his words--as "a long odyssey." It began in an unlikely place for a figure skater, Montgomery, Ala., and included stops in Springfield, Ohio; Birmingham, Ala.; Atlanta; Indianapolis; Lake Arrowhead, Calif.; and Hackensack, N.J. It figures Zimmerman's girlfriend would not be a local sweetheart from any of his hometowns but an Italian figure skater, Silvia Fontana, who also is competing at the Winter Olympics. It also figures that Zimmerman didn't mind making a cross-country trip for a one-hour tryout with the skater, Kyoko Ina, who would become his skating partner.

Timothy Goebel of Rolling Meadows made a multiple impression Friday night in his first international figure skating event at the senior level. Goebel, 17, landed a quadruple-salchow jump, plus a triple axel-triple toe loop combination and another triple axel in finishing fifth at the Goodwill Games in New York. Five-time U.S. champion Todd Eldredge won the title, worth $75,000, followed by two Russians, 1994 Olympic champion Alexei Urmanov and 1998 world bronze medalist Evgeny Pluschenko.

Russian figure skaters utterly dominated the European Championships Wednesday, finishing 1-2 in pairs and 1-2-3 in the short program phase of the men's competition in Milan, Italy. Elena Bereznaia-Anton Sikharulidze and Oksana Kazakova-Artur Dmitriev, couples from St. Petersburg coached by Tamara Moskvina, took the top pairs medals. France's Sarah Abitbol and Stephane Bernadis were third. The Russians likely would have swept had 1996 world champions Marina Eltsova-Andrei Bushkov not been forced to withdraw in the short program when her right skate blade broke.

The last few months have not been kind to 1998 world pairs champions Elena Bereznaia and Anton Sikharulidze of Russia. They lost their European title in January when Bereznaia fell ill with the flu and had to withdraw after the short program. They lost the Grand Prix Final two weeks ago when Bereznaia made seven mistakes in two programs, skating so poorly the fans in their adopted home town, St. Petersburg, Russia, booed marks that seemed too generous. Monday night at Hartwell Arena, they skated with the speed, poise and dynamism that makes them best in the world, easily sweeping the nine judges' ballots for the short program at the world championships.

The attorney for French figure skating judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne wants a number of witnesses subpoenaed for an International Skating Union hearing scheduled April 29-30 in Lausanne, Switzerland. But attorney Max Miller of Salt Lake City said, "To my knowledge, the ISU has subpoenaed only one, Jon Jackson." Jackson, a judge from San Francisco, had no role in the Olympic pairs controversy that led to the hearing on Le Gougne. He simply overheard statements Le Gougne allegedly made after she was among five of the nine judges whose votes made Russians Elena Bereznaia and Anton Sikharulidze the Olympic champions.

U.S. champion Michael Weiss finished fourth behind three Russians and the only other U.S. entry, pairs team Kyoko Ina and John Zimmerman, wound up last Saturday at the Grand Prix Final in St. Petersburg, Russia. While world champion Alexei Yagudin won the men's singles, there were upsets in the women's and pairs events. Tatiana Malinina of Uzbekistan surprised two-time European champion Maria Buytrskaya of Russia and the Chinese pair of Shen Xue-Zhao Hongbo beat reigning world champions Elena Bereznaia and Anton Sikharulidze of Russia.

A Catch-22 set of circumstances has delayed an appeal by the two French figure skating officials suspended for their roles in the 2002 Winter Olympic pairs skating controversy. Judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne and French ice sports federation President Didier Gailhaguet were suspended for three years and the 2006 Winter Olympics after an International Skating Union council hearing April 29-30. Under ISU rules, they had 28 days to file an appeal, a time period that would end Tuesday, given the date the suspension was announced.

French ice dancer Marina Anissina denied Monday that she had ever spoken to alleged Olympic fixer Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov about her victory at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games. Speaking at a news conference in Arles, France, Anissina admitted she had met Tokhtakhounov at a party in 1999 and had spoken occasionally to him since. "But I never asked him for anything," Anissina said. U.S. authorities have charged Tokhtakhounov, a reputed Russian mobster, with conspiring through French and Russian interests to fix the results of the Olympic pairs and ice dance results so Anissina and her partner, Gwendal Peizerat, would win the dance and Russians Elena Bereznaia and Anton Sikharulidze the pairs.